Field of the Invention
One embodiment of the present invention relates to a toner, a developer, and an image forming apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
An electric photographic image forming apparatus performs a charging step where an image forming region of a surface of a photoconductor is uniformly charged, an exposing step where writing is performed on the photoconductor, a developing step where a toner image is formed with a charged toner through frictions on the photoconductor, and a transferring step where the toner image on the photoconductor is transferred onto a recording medium directly, or via an intermediate transfer member, followed by fixing the toner image on the recording medium. Moreover, the toner remained on the photoconductor without being transferred to a printing sheet is scraped from the photoconductor by a cleaning step, to thereby be ready for a next image forming process.
As for a developer used in the developing step, a two-component developer containing a toner and a carrier, or a one-component developer containing only a magnetic or non-magnetic toner is used.
Along with developments of technologies of electrophotography, there is a need of a toner having excellent low temperature fixing ability and heat resistant storage stability.
Moreover, a flow improving agent is added to the toner to enhance flowability of the toner.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2011-2557 discloses a toner production method, which contains melting and kneading at least a binder resin, a colorant, and a releasing agent, cooling, and then pulverizing the kneaded product, and classifying to obtain base particles, followed by mixing at least one additive to the base particles to thereby obtain a toner. In this method, the mixing of the additive contains two stages of the mixing step, in which the base particles after the classification and part of the additive are mixed in the first stage of the mixing step, and the rest of the additive is added and mixed with the resulting base particles in the second stage of the mixing step. Moreover, the liberation ratio of the additive to the base particles as measured by an ultrasonic vibration method is 1% to 7%.
However, there are needs for a toner, which can present filming of silica, and can improve transfer stability.